Pocket Money

Even we Americans heard the news that Gerard Depardieu is emigrating from France for tax reasons. Dalrymple discussed it with lunch companions:

Most of the comment was unfavourable, as might be expected, but one remark caught my attention. It was that Depardieu had nothing to complain of because he was rich only because the state allowed him to be rich…

[W]hat my interlocutor at lunch meant was that it was up to the state how much money we should each be allowed, a proposition that to me is deeply sinister. It means that, far from the state being the creature of the people, the people are the creatures of the state: not government of the people, for the people, by the people, but people of the government, by the government and for the government.